Many Visio users discover how to insert fields into the text of Visio shapes to display data contained in Shape Data fields. But they become frustrated when they add multiple text blocks to grouped shapes, as the process becomes more tricky. Let’s take a look at how to do this!

The interesting problem of fitting words into arbitrarily-sized rectangular areas has been lurking in the dark corners of my D:\ drive for a while now. Today I decided to do something about it, and offer you a cool SmartShape to create interesting visuals with.

The area-filling text shape lends itself to creating Word Clouds and graphics that use text in a matrix- or tabular style.

Today I had the idea to make a Minions Visio SmartShape. I was primarily interested in controlling eye movement using ShapeSheet techniques.

As a responsible adult, I probably don’t (shouldn’t) have the time to finish it properly. But I thought I’d make this video to show off some capabilities and point out general concepts that might help to make useful SmartShapes.